In what can solely be described as a uniquely American drawback, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) prevents hundreds of individuals annually from boarding flights with weapons. That’s not an exaggeration, as the quantity was effectively over 6,000 in 2022.
Whereas it’s hardly newsworthy when one more individual is caught with a gun, this story is a bit completely different, as on this case it was a flight attendant making ready to work a flight…
Flight attendant caught with gun at Philadelphia Airport
The TSA has revealed that on Friday, September 15, 2023, screening personnel at Philadelphia Airport (PHL) stopped a flight attendant from boarding a airplane with a loaded .380 caliber handgun. This got here simply two weeks after the TSA prevented a person working on the airport retail concession retailers from bringing his loaded handgun by means of the checkpoint.
The flight attendant is a resident of Arizona, and was caught with the gun whereas being screened on the safety checkpoint forward of the flight she was purported to work. Whereas the TSA didn’t affirm this, she’s possible an American Airways flight attendant, based mostly on the mixture of flying out of Philadelphia and residing in Arizona. She was arrested by police, and faces a federal monetary penalty for making an attempt to hold a gun by means of a TSA checkpoint.
Right here’s the TSA’s Federal Safety Director for the airport describes these two finds:
“We’re all the time on the alert for any potential insider threats. Each of those have been good catches on the a part of our workforce. Flight attendants and staff contained in the terminal have insider information and entry to areas of the airport and plane that would pose a severe safety menace. These are glorious examples of why it stays necessary that airline staff and people who work in airports have to be screened earlier than getting access to safe areas of the airport.”
To this point this 12 months, the TSA at Philadelphia Airport has stopped 31 folks with weapons from passing by means of the checkpoint. That’s solely a tiny fraction of the overall variety of weapons which were stopped at checkpoints throughout the nation.
I don’t get this flight attendant’s motive?
Yearly, the TSA stops hundreds of individuals with weapons. Presumably a overwhelming majority of those folks aren’t trying to commit terror acts on planes, however reasonably they’re simply irresponsible gun house owners. Look, personally I don’t actually “get” weapons, however I believe that for those who’re going to be a gun proprietor, you have to be held accountable whenever you don’t observe the principles. When passengers arrive at TSA checkpoints with weapons, often the excuse is “oh, I forgot I had it.”
Anyway, let’s assume that the flight attendant didn’t have a loaded gun with the intent of committing some type of a horrible crime on the plane. I nonetheless can’t make sense of why the flight attendant would have a gun on a layover?
- Did the flight attendant one way or the other purchase a gun in Pennsylvania with the intent of transporting it dwelling to Arizona?
- Did the flight attendant truly know that she’d undergo the usual TSA checkpoint, or was she anticipating to have Recognized Crewmember entry, however then obtained chosen for a random search?
- Whereas this represents a tiny minority of the general flight attendant inhabitants, we’ve seen some flight attendants get caught for smuggling medicine, since they’ve a reasonably low danger manner of transporting them once they can keep away from safety; was she perhaps transporting a gun for another person?
It’s potential that the flight attendant might lose her job right here, however usually the implications for being caught with a gun at a safety checkpoint are fairly minimal (no less than in comparison with what they’d be in different nations).
Backside line
A flight attendant was caught with a loaded gun at Philadelphia Airport, whereas making an attempt to undergo the safety checkpoint, previous to boarding a flight she was working. It’s not clear what precisely the flight attendant’s motive was for carrying a gun, although sadly she’s one in all hundreds of people that put themselves in this sort of state of affairs yearly. Nevertheless, most individuals are passengers, and never staff.
What do you make of this flight attendant gun incident?
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